Flooding and lightning strikes in Yemen have killed eight civilians, an official and a doctor told AFP on Saturday, underscoring the threat of extreme weather in the war-ravaged country.
The lightning strikes occurred on Friday in the Al-Layha and Al-Zahra districts of Hodeida governorate on the Red Sea coast, said Hamza Saied, a doctor at the hospital in Al-Layha.
“Six women and a man were killed, and three others were injured,” he said.
The area is controlled by Huthi rebels who seized the capital in 2014, prompting a Saudi-led coalition to intervene the following year and setting in motion a brutal conflict that has created what the United Nations describes as one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
Additionally, on Friday, a woman lost her life due to flooding, and numerous homes were devastated in the nearby town of Hais, as disclosed by an unnamed official. The official spoke on condition of anonymity since he lacked the authorization to provide information to the media.
Hais is situated within the territory governed by the internationally recognized government, which has its base in the southern city of Aden.
Extreme weather has displaced more than 200,000 people in Yemen so far this year, “many of whom had already been displaced multiple times”, the UN Population Fund reported earlier this week.
“Heavy rain is now forecast to affect nearly 2 million displaced people over the coming weeks, threatening lives and livelihoods across multiple communities,” it said.
The nearly decade-long war has left infrastructure in tatters across Yemen, the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country.
A truce that took effect in April of last year has largely held despite officially expiring last October.
Hopes for a more durable ceasefire received a new boost on Thursday night when a Huthi delegation travelled to Riyadh for the first time since the Saudi-led coalition intervened.
